News & opinion

World Built Environment Forum Summit 2018

We look back at the best World Built Environment Forum Summit yet, at which innovators and global influencers gathered to determine the future direction of the built environment.

A leading world city, iconic capital and the venue for the 2018 World Built Environment Forum Summit, London welcomed more than 1,000 industry professionals from 40 different countries at an event attracting the very best minds in a sector looking to constantly adapt lead and grow.

The World Built Environment Forum Summit is a unique gathering of innovators and global influencers addressing the world’s biggest challenges, including collaborative infrastructure, investment risk and the fourth industrial revolution.

Keynote speaker, Tesla co-founder and CTO, JB Straubel, shared his insights to an audience with standing room only, highlighting the need for innovation, creative thinking and forward planning: "When we try and convert, adapt and upgrade buildings, it’s always more expensive and more difficult than it is to do it from a clean sheet of paper and design in the right principles from the beginning".

Things are changing as women become more empowered in the workplace and take progressive, higher earning roles.

Leading practitioners in the built environment also tackled diversity issues and how companies can retain more women, with Simon Prichard, senior partner, Gerald Eve stating: “Things are changing as women become more empowered in the workplace and take progressive, higher earning roles. There’s an inevitability of greater flexibility... if society keeps on the same trajectory it has been on”.

Following on from this, those helping to shape and run London, Stockholm and Vienna offered their viewpoints of creating the most liveable cities in the world with Maria Vassilakou, Vice Mayor and and Vice Governor of Vienna highlighting the need for affordable living: “What makes us special among cities worldwide, especially among growing cities is that although we are growing at such a high pace, which means investment and new urban quarters being created each and every year, is that we wanted to remain an affordable city”.

The World Built Environment Forum Summit 2018 provided a wealth of presentation, networking opportunities and key conversations that will inform discussions for the coming 12 months until the summit reconvenes in New York in April 2019.

Innovators and global influencers

Watch highlights from the 2018 World Built Environment Summit Fourm, at which industry leaders debated the future of the built environment.